Encyclopedias, printed common-place
books, and miscellaneous repertoires of humanistic learning
Our project
The project Poliantea: Encyclopedias, printed
common-place books, and miscellaneous repertoires of humanistic learning forms part of the activities
of the SIELAE (Interdisciplinary Seminar for the
Study of
Spanish Golden Age Literature). This group has worked on the
elaboration of a
primary and secondary bibliography of works published between the XVIth
and XVIIIth centuries, that gather encyclopedic type
knowledge
offered in different taxonomies: by commonplaces, by alphabetical
order, etc…
with the goal of organizing diverse types of knowledge in logical
structures.
Our
interest is focused on
this type of works, used by poets, orators, preachers, painters and
artists of
all kinds to elaborate their productions in the XVIth-XVIIIth
centuries. Using titles as Polyanthea, Officina, Sylva, Hortus
floridus, Thesaurus, Theatrum, Officina, Syntaxis, Panoptikon,
Argumenta, or their equivalents in vulgar
languages: Theater,
Garden, Florilegium, etc.
they gather the classics' sentences, adages,
apothegms, proverbs, anecdotes from Sacred or profane History, exempla, fables… that served to enrich
their works with learning or just as an aid to inventio.
Besides
these helpful works
(many of them written in Latin and dedicated to a public competent in
the use
of that language), beginning in the XVIth century, another
kind of
book began to enjoy great success. In Spanish we call them Misceláneas. Generally, this type
of book gathers in a single volume heterogeneous curiosities, mixing
topics
from Antiquity with other contemporaneous ones in a more or less random
order.
Written in the vulgar language (often in the form of dialogues,
epistles or
essays), their main purpose is the popularization of knowledge,
inaccessible
until then to those who did not know Latin. They seek to teach by
appealing to
the senses of astonishment and admiration. The author's contribution
consists,
mainly, of selecting these materials in which he displays a combination
of
knowledge and experience. Titles often announce a more or less
intention of
order: Silva de varia lección (that
is to say, extracts of several readings arranged in a non-organized
manner,
like in a forest); Jardín de flores
curiosas (selection, by way of anthology, of the best and most
curious
things to read…).
For those who
study the
literary and humanistic European culture of the XVIth-XVIIIth
centuries, this type of work is extremely useful: for annotated
editions, or to
help to study or understand iconographic programs, or diverse studies
on
Literature, Art, or the transmission and organization of knowledge.
This
European cultural heritage is usually preserved in libraries that house
rare
books, but they are not easily accessible.